The North is falling.That’s what some say, at least. There are many and myriad reasons to say so, some more compelling than others. The shining silver and unyielding iron of the Paladin Pece has lost is lustre, they say:There are monsters in the lakes and rivers, creeping through the hills and dales from the Bloodrise Mountains. Shapeshifting lizardmen spy from the shadows. Demon cults perform dreadful rites in forsaken farmlands left barren by dragonfire. Goblins beset caravans to the east, emboldened orcs expand to their north, and the Southmen have cut off trade and stage military drills along the lowest border of Civilization.A weak-hearted woman sits upon the throne of Hawksong, greatest jewel of the North, with an absent husband and a mongrel heir.The Archmage is dying.Everyone has heard at least some of these rumors, seen some evidence that they are more than the tall tales of pessimistic drunkards…But for some, chaos is opportunity. An age of instability is many things, but to an adventurer, it means two things above all else: glory, and gold!…
Welcome back to CAMBION QUEST, quite possibly the ONLY quest on the board where three-or-so years of near-daily updates in a D&D-esque setting has culminated in the problematic and typo-addled tale of a vaguely Jewish-coded shortstack having a midlife crisis while on a roadtrip with her psychotic intersex clone.I mean, for whatever THAT's worth.If you're just joining us, https://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/qstarchive.html?tags=reptoidqm has everything you need to know. Really, the last two threads are the only necessary ones, but the three quests prior have LORE if that's your jam.Our current character art is courtesy of Story QM, of Downerquest and Versequest.
…You are Zith-Zi, though your present company know you as Zena Youngtree. Born a goblin, you underwent a ritual which transformed you inside and out, gifting you a new soul and body. Your sun-weathered green hide was dyed a pearlescent pink, your wrinkles smoothed and liver-spots rendered into pretty freckles. Your soulless goblin heart was implanted with magic—fairy magic, the ancient art of the elves—and made PRISMASTIC…But what of your heart?You sometimes wonder about that. If your body’s been transformed, and your soul is freshly-formed, why does your heart still carry the weight of your years of strife and struggle? Why do you still weep at night, sometimes, worried that you will never be worthy of anything better than a goblin’s lot—brutal, short, with an ugly end?And if you DO deserve better, can DO better… What about your goblin companions, like An-Yii and Yeb-Uit?What about Carazzi—or Cara-Zi, or just ‘Cara’ in this mixed company—the demon-spirited goblinoid who was cut from you like a cancer when you were made beautiful and whole?You spent years of your life in the foothills of the Bloodrise Mountain, in a shanty-shack in new Goblintown, trying to make sense of that. You decided that you were done with whatever lingering responsibility you had to ‘your people’, then. As a ‘nilbog’, you were goblin no longer, and you took the most useful of the bunch—plus Khorine the Faun, an orphaned goat-girl you meta long the way—and set out to make your future and to PROVE your merit! Together, and with the aid of some unlikely allies, you rooted out and routed a darkly-enchanted cave-drake turned fifty foot lake monster. Though you split the reward a great many ways, you ALSO earned an opportunity to make some proper coin mile away, aiding the dwarven corporation Treasuretrove incorporated—or, at least, their contracted adventured called ‘The Delvers’—in finding and fishing out of the ancient earth a lost treasure of their race’s fallen empire.But… Why?
>>6159286You’ve been beating your head against the proverbial stone over that, these last few weeks of walking, from one end of the Northlands to the other. Gods Above and Below know that James Efron—Jimmy, your paramour of many years—wishes you wouldn’t. Even after changing yourself so much, at least partly for the sake of your relationship, your refusal to settle down at live a ladylike life proved a fly in the ointment of your relationship. At first you explained away that restless urge by way of your commitment to resettle your—that is, to resettle the goblins. Then, it was about Cara—CZ—and finding her an outlet for her unholy urges. Lately, it’s been about the money—about making a big score, of the sort that can transform a nilbog’s life.But if this is it—if this is the big one—will that be done and dusted? Will you be done, ready to settle done?What will you even do with yourself, if you do leave this life?>The money’s enough—if you could be rich, you’d retire in a heartbeat>You want status—recognition, if not renown, and a position of power>You want love—love is all you need, be it from Jimmy or from someone else who can properly appreciate you>You’re in it for your shadow, your ‘sister’—until CZ is settled, too, you can’t stop>You’re in it for adventure—you can lie to yourself, sometimes, but in the end the life itself is your one true love>Write-in
>>6159283Purple hag>>6159288>The money’s enough—if you could be rich, you’d retire in a heartbeatIncome that’s sustainable, at the least. >You want love—love is all you need, be it from Jimmy or from someone else who can properly appreciate youWe cannot twist ourselves, trying be who we’re not to appease someone else. That’s not the basis of a good relationship. It’ll generate nothing more than regret and resentment.
>>6159288>You want love>You’re in it for your shadow, your ‘sister’I have not (yet) read the past threads, so you may disregard this vote as it is not that informed
>>6159288>You want love—love is all you need, be it from Jimmy or from someone else who can properly appreciate you>You’re in it for your shadow, your ‘sister’—until CZ is settled, too, you can’t stopwelcome back, OP.
>>6159288>Write-in>The truth is : you want to carve a place in that harsh word where goblins fit on a larger scale.For this to work, money, status and love will be required.
>>6159288>The money’s enough—if you could be rich, you’d retire in a heartbeat
>>6159288>You’re in it for your shadow, your ‘sister’—until CZ is settled, too, you can’t stop
>>6159295>>6159296>>6159305>>6159456>>6159570>>6159688You curse yourself, and then your curse yourself again—aloud, and loud enough to turn some of your fellow travelers’ heads. You shoot them a glare that turns them back around, and settle into stew properly upon the realization which ahs just rocked you to your core:You really have gone soft.You’ve been denying it a while now, but you can’t ignore the evidence in your very own nilbog heart: for all your talk of money, you’re set it aside repeatedly for the sake of such stupid humie obsessions as ‘friendship’ and ‘fairness’… And you haven’t even gotten laid for your trouble! You’ve instead been hung up on James Olsen’s absent ass to the previously-unthinkable point of extended celibacy. Meanwhile, in spite of your growing distant from all things ‘goblin’, you set aside your own needs to pen a letter to your old khoblis—that is to say, MAGE—buddy, Tips, al for you’re the sake of your demonic doppelganger. Just when did that parasitic partition of the bits and bobs which you abandoned become so precious to you?!When did you ACTUALLY start to think of her as a sister?Sisterly Bond increased; Zith-Zi now grants a -6 to the DC of <WANT> checks when present and assisting.What you now realize, to your chagrin, is that you’ve been chasing something utterly unlike that which a young Zith-Zi would have pursued: the approval and happiness of others. Forsaking lust and luxury, you’ve been busting your hump for love—LOVE, of all things!—both familial and friendly… or more than friendly.Zith-Zi’s seduction DCs are now reduced by 3, but she will look into romance routes faster than she would otherwise.As you journey towards your distant destination, you find your thinking muddled by the implications of this revelation. You DO want to settle down, once CZ is similarly ‘settled’… But with Jimmy? Or with someone else? Occasionally you find yourself staring after the likes of Yeb-Uit (that grizzled old olive of a gob) or that tinkertoy soldier-boy Martyn Meadowgrass (hunky, fro a hobbit), until you catch yourself.(A girl’s gotta’ have SOME dignity, after all… You’ve got a reputation as ‘Boss’ to think about!)…(But still…)…
>>6159905…You are Cara—or Carazzi, or CZ, or maybe just Zith-Zi of another colour—and you know EXACTLY what you motivates you: It’s <ENVY>.Ever since you can remember—or remember CLEARLY, since you can technically remember right back to your occult conception—you have envied others. When you and ZZ were one and the same, you think you must have been the part of her that delighted to plunder the wealth of others. In New Goblintown, you envied even the other impoverished gobs, who could at least revel in one another’s company, enjoy one another in body and soul without invoking fear or initiated a frenzy.You want that for yourself, and you want it BAD.<WANT: 14>While your prettier, pinker portion was making friends and influencing people in Sunset Lake, you’d pursued a different path: you’d taken up with the hellhound Maladoo, the mascot (and secret psychic ringleader) of the Maladoo Gang adventuring party. He taught you how to follow the ‘Rark Rath’, as he speech-impediment conveyed it, and you had learned occult secrets of The Dark God of Wisdom, by way of an eerie agent with an oversized eye. You’d learnef that you were a CAMBION …And you deeply envy those who are not.You’d tried to make friends. You’d even tried to make OUT, with this thicc dwarf chick named Svanhilda Pearl, but you’d made a mess of it. As a cambion, the spawn of a succubus, driven by unwholesome instincts to feed of souls soaked in lust and terror, you have found yourself making stupid mistakes which invariably drive others away. Still, you persevere! Armed with the enhanced shapeshifting abilities which allow you to hide your inner ugliness behind the mask of a petite quasi-elven edifice, you’ve made strides which even the non-fiendish goblinoids in your party cannot. The Delvers seem to like you, and ~Martyn Meadowgrass~ even calls you ‘Mermaid’, having encountered you during an underwater expedition!(‘Course, he doesn’t know about the ‘secret weapon’ between your knees…)
>>6159908These last couple weeks have started to wear on you, though. For the last couple years, you kept yourself in check by cowering beneath mortal notice, suppressing your presence and cloaking your deformed body in oversized clothes. Now that you can be beautiful-on-demand, and people actually seem to like you, you’re getting a lot more attention…And you’re so envious of those who can act on it, without constantly being worried about what will happen if they let their guard down.You've withdrawn again, starting to nervously laugh your way through conversations and to take any excuse to go hunting or scouting alone. You KNOW you're doing it, and that you promised yourself you wouldn't. But what else is a demogoblin—or CAMBION—to do?? You don't want to fuck up, to embarrass yourself or hurt anyone else... But you ALSO made a commitment to open up to others and to live something like a normal life! The only question is: who?>You got off on a bad hoof with the goat-girl, Khorine, but she’s been more sympathetic since you spared and cared for that beast you captured at the base of the Bloodrise…>An-Yii has been wary of you ever since you gave into temptation and perched upon her to spy upon her dreams, but maybe you can mend that bridge?>Yeb-Uit has always been pretty nice to you, and that whole strong-and-silent thig he’s got going is kinda’ cool…>Can you even pick anyone OTHER than ~Martyn Meadowgrass~, who calls you ~Mermaid~? Then again… You’re pretty tightly-wound, and he is so very ~tempting~>Write-in[Isolation isn’t an option, due to choices made towards the end of last thread]
>>6159909>You got off on a bad hoof with the goat-girl, Khorine, but she’s been more sympathetic since you spared and cared for that beast you captured at the base of the Bloodrise…she's the only one we're not attracted to nor had a weird thing going on and her connection to the exoteric might help her understand us.
>>6159909>Can you even pick anyone OTHER than ~Martyn Meadowgrass~, who calls you ~Mermaid~? Then again… You’re pretty tightly-wound, and he is so very ~tempting~How can we not, it says it right in the option
>>6159909>Can you even pick anyone OTHER than ~Martyn Meadowgrass~, who calls you ~Mermaid~? Then again… You’re pretty tightly-wound, and he is so very ~tempting~He cool
>>6159909>Yeb-Uit has always been pretty nice to you, and that whole strong-and-silent thig he’s got going is kinda’ cool…Would choose Martin, but don't want to lose control around another pretty face, whereas we're pretty good keeping things professional with Yeb
>>6159909>>Can you even pick anyone OTHER than ~Martyn Meadowgrass~, who calls you ~Mermaid~? Then again… You’re pretty tightly-wound, and he is so very ~tempting~
